| Abstract: |
Introduction: During 1979 and 1980 the Khorat Basin Archaeological Project (KBAP)-a cooperative project involving researchers from the University of Hawaii, the Fine Arts Department of Thailand, and Chulalongkorn University-conducted survey and excavation of sites in the vicinity of the town of Phimai in northeast Thailand. Phimai formerly served as a regional Khmer sacred, administrative, and commercial center from about A.D. 1000 to 1300. Archaeological and historical evidence indicated that Phimai might have been an important center before its integration into the Khmer state. The approach taken in the research was regional, investigating the development of Phimai as a major center by focusing upon the towns that formed alternative or minor centers and upon the villages and farms that constituted the hinterland for Phimai and supported its development. The primary focus of the investigations was on the fortified or moated sites, sites surrounded with earth walls and moats, first identified on aerial photographs by Peter Williams-Hunt (1950). The goals of the research included the location, mapping, and dating of the moated sites in the Phimai region and determination of the function, date of construction, and present condition of the earthworks at these sites. Two hypotheses were proposed for testing: (1) the concentration of population into these moated sites was associated with the practice of intensive wet rice agriculture, and (2) these sites were centers for long-distance exchange. In a previous paper, Welch (1983) presented preliminary results based primarily on in-the-field analysis of the data. A later paper (Welch 1984) provided a more thorough analysis of the site survey data and their implications in terms of settlement, subsistence, and political organization during the late prehistoric period in the Phimai region. The present paper furnishes detailed information on the excavations conducted at two sites, Ban Tamyae and Non Ban Kham. In particular, this paperpresents data regarding the stratification of the cultural deposits at these sites and their dating, proposes a regional ceramic phase sequence, and discusses the implications of these data for the chronology onate prehistoric and early historic settlement on the Khorat Plateau. The radiocarbon dates will also be published by Bronson and White (n. d.) in their list of Southeast Asian radiocarbon dates, but it is important to discuss these dates in relation to the stratigraphic contexts from which they were derived. This information is discussed in more detail in Welch's University of Hawaii dissertation (1985), but it is summarized here because of its relation to issues of wider concern.
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